Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Hey Y'all! Have you missed me? Life is settling back down to its normal frantic pace after two weeks of celebration and having Nana here for a visit. I love having my mom in my home - it makes me envious of those of you who live close enough for nightly visits with parents and siblings. We're spread all over the country! I promise to post photos soon of some of the past weeks' events, including my son's graduation, which was spectacular.

I've added some new stuff this week over at CatholicMom.com, along with updates of all of our favorite columnists. Take a look at our new Family Dinners feature, featuring Christine's wonderful recipes. This will become a new weekly feature and I think it's going to be great! If you like Christine's recipes, you may want to follow the links on that page to her "Dine Without Whine" service - your subscription earns a small referral fee for CatholicMom.com and will go to help keep the site alive and well.

For now, I'm off to a staff meeting at Church and then to pick up son #1 from football practice (yes, it's already started!!!). One favor to ask: would you please all join me today in praying for a special intention?

Mom, I miss you already! Can't you just come back - oh, and bring Daddy too! I'm a forty two year old woman with separation anxiety.

Launched in late 1999, CatholicMom.com welcomes visitors every month from around the world. The site features columns by over one hundred contributing columnists who volunteer their expertise on everything from Catholic Breastfeeding and Natural Family Planning to parenting humor. Additionally, CatholicMom.com is home to a Catholic Book Club featuring monthly fiction, non-fiction and children’s selections by Catholic authors. The site’s Catholic Music Spotlights highlight the work of Catholic recording artists in an interview format designed to help promote Catholic music and aid parents in helping their children make uplifting listening decisions.

Each week, CatholicMom.com offers a variety of children’s activities designed to help children learn from the Sunday Liturgy of the Word. These activities, based upon the Sunday Gospel, include age appropriate coloring pages, crossword and word search puzzles, and interactive Mass worksheets designed to help the child truly embrace the Mass. Weekly lesson plan aids are offered for Religious Education teachers, homeschoolers and families looking to teach the faith based upon the Church’s liturgical calendar. Visitors from around the globe have come to rely upon these free and liturgically relevant catechetical materials.

Lisa and her husband Greg, an Emergency Physician, reside in Fresno, California with their two sons, Eric and Adam. Lisa and Greg met and married at the University of Notre Dame and share a passion for Irish football. Following her undergraduate work at Notre Dame, Lisa earned a Master’s Degree in Human Resource Development from Vanderbilt University. She worked for several years in the field of Human Resources for non-profit entities including Kaiser Permanente and Vanderbilt University, specializing in recruitment and corporate training prior to “retiring” to care for her children in the home.

Today, Lisa heads a home based web design business, designing and maintaining sites for several clients. In addition to her work with CatholicMom.com, she is also employed by St. Anthony of Padua parish as webmaster for the parish and school web sites. She has done pro bono web design for Samaritan Women, a prison ministry agency and is involved in numerous community service initiatives. The Hendey family members are active parishioners at St. Anthony of Padua Parish, where Lisa serves an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist.

As a freelance writer, Lisa is a regular contributor to Catholic Exchange, Catholic Online, and Catholic.net and countless other Internet publishers. Additionally, Lisa has written the “Tech for You” column at the Catholic Women’s Channel. Her articles have appeared in the National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, Canticle Magazine, Grapevine Magazine and Kids’ Ark Magazine.

Lisa’s most recent projects include Productivity @ Home, a blog site that examines the topic of personal productivity in the home and family environment, and the Catholic Moments Podcast, a weekly interview format program that was recently selected to be an affiliate of the highly acclaimed Star Quest Production Network (SQPN), the home of the “Best in Catholic Podcasting”. In addition, Lisa is currently filming “CatholicMom.com – Your Gateway to Faith and Family Resources on the Web”, a television program produced by KNXT-TV and the Diocese of Fresno. The show features short video segments to be aired multiple times each week that will explore faith and family resources on the Internet. Lisa can also be found blogging each week as part of the team of writers at Faith and Family Live (http://www.faithandfamilylive.com), the new and very popular web site of Faith and Family Magazine.

Lisa M. Hendey is available to speak to your group on Catholic faith, family, new media, personal productivity and healthy living topics. Lisa is domiciled in the Diocese of Fresno and has received authorization and permission from Bishop John T. Steinbock to speak both within and outside of the Diocese of Fresno.